Poster #114 - The Relationship Between Inference-making Abilities and Overall Listening Comprehension

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

This study examined whether children’s inferential abilities and their theory of mind may contribute to 4- and 6-year-olds’ oral listening comprehension using commercially available children’s picture storybooks. Understanding the development of children’s oral listening comprehension is critical because of the importance of this skill in predicting reading abilities by 2nd grade (Kendeou et al., 2009). Preschool children’s ability to make inferences improves with age (Lepola et al., 2012) and these predict their oral listening comprehension (Florit et al., 2011; Lepola et al., 2012; Tompkins et al., 2013). The present study adds to this literature that has examined the relationship of inference-making and oral listening comprehension in several ways: delineating age differences in children’s ability to make inferences of varying degrees of complexity; exploring the relationship between social understanding and comprehension; and identifying whether children’s ability to make inferences during story reading influences their overall comprehension of that same story.

Thirty 4-year-olds and thirty-six 6-year-olds were read a picture storybook at two separate sessions and were asked comprehension questions at predetermined points throughout the story. These questions were categorized as literal (answer available in the text / pictures), simple inferential (inferring from current page), or complex inferential (drawing connections between different parts of the story). At the end of each reading, children were tested for story recall. Children were also tested on theory of mind, verbal memory, and receptive vocabulary.

To evaluate children’s performance on questions of varying degrees of complexity, we calculated the percentage of questions children answered correctly in each category (literal, simple, and complex). Results indicated that 6-year-olds performed better than 4-year-olds (p < .001). Children performance increased linearly (p < .001) across the three question types, providing correct answers for 82% of literal, 59% of simple, and 31% of complex inferential questions. Performance on question types differed across the two books. Specifically, children’s performance on literal questions in the first book (87%) was higher (p = .001) than their performance on literal questions in the second book (78%). Children performed similarly on simple and complex inferential questions in both books (see Figure 1).

Next we examined whether children’s theory of mind abilities, verbal memory, and their performance on the questions during listening predicted their overall story recall at the end of book-reading. Separate hierarchical regressions were calculated for each book with age, vocabulary, and memory in the first step, theory of mind task in the second step, and literal, simple, and complex inferential questions in the final step. Performance on complex inferential questions predicted story recall, but vocabulary, memory, theory-of-mind, literal, and simple inferential questions did not (see Table 1). Although some studies have found a relationship between memory and comprehension (Florit et al., 2011; Lepola et al., 2012) as well as theory of mind abilities and text comprehension (Kim, 2015), the lack of relationship here suggests that children’s ability to make complex inferences may be a uniquely critical skill relating to overall comprehension. Implications of these findings for further research and applications will be discussed.

Authors

• Caitlin Elise Lindley, Lehigh University
  Presenting Author

• Ageliki Nicolopoulou, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Emily Wallace, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author